Former Egypt official jailed for graft

Cairo: An Egyptian court on Tuesday sentenced Sami Mahran, an ex-parliament official, to three years in prison for corruption.

The court also ordered Mahran, who served as the secretary of parliament in the era of the now-toppled president Hosni Mubarak and kept his post for months under Islamists’ rule, of paying a fine of 17 million Egyptian pounds (around Dh11.3 million) on charges of making illegal gains.

Mahran’s wife and daughter were fined a total of 8.57 million pounds (around Dh5.71 million) in the same case. The ruling can be appealed.

The verdict is the latest against Mubarak-era officials accused of corruption.

President Mohammad Mursi has recently said he would call for a “new revolution if necessary” to weed out alleged corruption.

Meanwhile, another court gave a one-year jail term to a bodyguard of Khairat Al Shater, the influential deputy supreme guide of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

The Criminal Court convicted Khalil Osama of illegally possessing a pistol after he had been arrested with the gun at a polling station in Cairo in December.

Al Shater, who rarely speaks in public, is believed to be one of the Brotherhood’s strongmen. The group had fielded him as its contender in Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential elections last year. When his candidacy was disqualified, the Brotherhood replaced Al Shater with Mursi who became Egypt’s first elected Islamist president.